By Edward Nawotka
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A company's culture may be invisible, but it pervades every aspect of a business environment, writes Jerome Want in ``Corporate Culture: Illuminating the Black Hole'' (St. Martin's).
Want, a former director of Organization Design and Development with Motorola, examines the strategies and orthodoxies at a variety of companies, from Cisco to Harley- Davidson, and defines the predominant corporate cultures, from predatory to bureaucratic to what he dubs ``high-performing New Age.''
He explains how the forward-thinking, environmentally savvy and employee-sensitive corporate culture at Vermont's Green Mountain Coffee Roasters helped transform it from a small regional operation to a nationally recognized brand.
Mature companies such as Xerox and Polaroid, once at the pinnacle of their industries, have suffered from their intransigent corporate cultures. Internal dynamics can have a serious effect on a company's bottom line and may be an elusive but very real indicator of a company's future success or failure.
Other highlights this month include:
``Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich'' by James J. Cramer (Simon & Schuster). Cramer, the ``Booyah''-bellowing host of CNBC's ``Mad Money,'' distills his investment wisdom in this new book, which promises to explain how he judges a stock in mere seconds during the show's infamous ``Lightning Round,'' what to look out for in CEO and CFO interviews, and why he's so manic on- air.
``About Alice'' by Calvin Trillin (Random House). Trillin's wife, Alice, who often starred as a comic figure in his writing, died on Sept. 11, 2001, at age 63 from complications of lung cancer. Here she gets a moving yet funny homage from her eloquent husband.
``Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything'' by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (Portfolio). Based on a $9 million research project, this book examines how the Internet has empowered the masses to produce, edit and distribute their own content and what this means for companies that are the traditional gatekeepers of information.
``Age Shock and Pension Power: How Finance Is Failing Us'' by Robin Blackburn (Verso). An academic argues that despite the proliferation of investment products, greed and mismanagement in the financial-service industry have undermined the ability of savings and pension funds to support our graying population.
``Calvin Coolidge'' by David Greenberg (Times Books). Greenberg offers a brief biography of the 30th U.S. president, who served from 1923 to 1929 and made business development a platform of his administration, laying the groundwork for future generations of conservative, fiscally minded politicians. It is Coolidge who declared: ``The chief business of the American people is business.''
``Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry'' by Dan Hurley (Broadway Books). Hurley's examination of this $20 billion industry reveals how the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act left the business of vitamins virtually unregulated and, as a consequence, given it free rein to prey on uninformed consumers.
``It's Called Work for a Reason! Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault'' by Larry Winget (Gotham). Another bullying TV talking head, Winget, the host of A&E's ``Big Spender,'' delves into what he sees as right and wrong with businesses. With frequent reminders that companies stress making money, he offers advice on how to take best advantage of a variety of workplace scenarios.
``Next Now: Trends for the Future'' by Marian Salzman and Ira Matathia (Palgrave Macmillan). Salzman, executive vice president at ad agency JWT, and co-author Matathia, a brand consultant, collate trends from across the globe in an attempt to forecast what's coming. Their conclusions aren't likely to wow you. They say, for example, that ``Chindia'' is going to be an economic force. But they can be entertaining.
``The Judges: A Penetrating Exploration of American Courts and of the New Decisions -- Hard Decisions -- They Must Make for a New Millennium'' by Martin Mayer (Truman Talley Books). Mayer took six years to write this expose of the judicial system, which covers everything from the Supreme Court on down to local criminal courts. He concludes that cronyism put many of our 30,000 judges on the bench and a significant percentage needs specialized training.
``Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue'' by Stephanie Mencimer (Free Press). A Washington Monthly reporter tackles the issue of tort reform, rehashing arguments for and against, and comes away with the belief that the biggest beneficiaries of reform are politically conservative corporations in danger of being sued (think of McDonald's and its once scalding hot coffee), while mostly liberal trial lawyers and Joe Citizen lose out.
``American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work'' by Susan Cheever (Simon & Schuster). This gossipy group portrait of the Transcendentalists of Concord, Massachusetts, delves into their personal rivalries, speculates about their love lives and examines their early form of activism during the period 1840 to 1868.
``Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work'' by Martin Geck (Harcourt). Lucidly written in a style that is accessible to non- musicologists, this biography by an acclaimed German academic devotes lengthy passages to analyzing Bach's renowned technique and why his music so moves listeners.
(Edward Nawotka is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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